Economic aspects of constitutional change: the case of Belgium

Marcel Gerard ()

Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 2014, vol. 30, issue 2, 257-276

Abstract: Is Belgium threatened by secession? In this article we highlight why Belgium is unlikely to experience the secession of Flanders and investigate Belgium’s journey to federalism. We first call upon tools provided by economic theory. Then we turn to facts, first having a look at Belgium’s history and second presenting the six reforms of the state which occurred between 1970 and 2013, progressively increasing the autonomy of Belgian regions and communities and making Belgian federalism an evolutionary, maybe endless, repeated game whose players have different strategies: an offensive one for the north and a conservative one for the south. Then we examine the contemporary dangers and discuss the outcome of Belgian game from the point of view of fiscal federalism and subsidiarity.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/oxrep/gru016 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:oxford:v:30:y:2014:i:2:p:257-276.

Access Statistics for this article

Oxford Review of Economic Policy is currently edited by Christopher Adam

More articles in Oxford Review of Economic Policy from Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().